


Something

by IndulgentDiscourse



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, first time saying I love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15977195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndulgentDiscourse/pseuds/IndulgentDiscourse
Summary: Barry does some late-night thinking.





	Something

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from “Something” by the Beatles
> 
>  
> 
> Me: okay I gotta focus on this exam coming up 
> 
> Shit brain: Across the Universe TAZ au :) 
> 
> Me: Absolutley Not 
> 
> Shit Brain: Blupjeans instead :) 
> 
> It’s actually getting really close to the one-year anniversary of when I started listening to Taz so happy anniversary to me and myself with this very niche fic

He watched her, in the sleep-heavy darkness of the pre-dawn morning. Barry propped himself up on his elbow, gazing fondly at Lup. She huffed in her sleep, stirred gently, and settled back down.

Gods, he was so in love. All those years spent wanting and pining- they hadn’t even been an official couple for more than two weeks or so, and yet he knew. And he knew that she loved him, too. It was just a little harder for her to say so.

All the years she and her brother spent on their own, all those years fighting and scrabbling to survive, just to find a place- he knew that other people had hurt her. Physically, no doubt, she’d been in plenty of fights in the past and always delighted in swapping stories about her scars with Magnus. But emotionally, that was a much harder wound to heal. She was slow to open up to the entire crew, and slower to open up to Barry. He knew it wasn’t anything he’d done, and that she had those walls up for good reason. He knew he just had to be patient.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way, frankly. He loved Lup for all of her, past and issues and traumas and everything that made her Lup. And he knew she loved him back, loved him with all the fiery passion that she contained inside herself, loved him with everything she had.

After all, you don’t spend forty years pining for someone to give up on the first hitch.

Softly, as to not disturb her, he reached out and gently brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Her long ear twitched, and she muttered something before kicking her legs, stretching out on her back.

Gods, she was beautiful. He’d told her as much the other night, when she was perched on his lap, his hands on her waist. She’d accepted the compliment with ease, basking in the attention he gave her.

“You’re pretty hot yourself, hon,” she purred, and Barry almost stopped everything just to impress upon her how gorgeous she was, and how lucky of a man he was to be able to just know her- forget being able to hold her and touch her like that.

That night, he whispered everything he loved about her into her skin- just how big her heart was, her passion for life, how clever she was, how much he adored her confidence, how she attracted him like nothing else in all the worlds they’d been to.

She’d laughed, eyes glinting with the warm light that he’d come to see she only held for him.

“Is that all?” She’d been teasing, of course, expecting to be done with the whole “shower-love-on-Lup” thing, but he carried right on, voice getting lower and breath almost hitching. He told her about his favorite things about her, illustrated with kisses or caresses. Aside from her sighs, she was mostly silent, except for a cocky grin and an amused, “Thanks, my brother grew them for me.”

He added her humor to the list.

It wasn’t until he fell nearly silent and instead contented himself with mapping out the freckles across her shoulders that she grabbed his face in both her hands.

“Hey,” she said, flipping them, so she delicately straddled his lap. “It’s time for Lup’s opinion.”

She showered him with affection, the likes of which Barry wasn’t used to, or able to handle. He was unable to meet her eyes after she blessed him with compliment after compliment, running her hands over his sides and chest. She placed a hand his cheek and gently guided his eyes to hers, leaning down to press their foreheads together.

“You trust me, Bear?” He nodded, closed his eyes, relaxed. She rewarded him with a kiss to his forehead. She carried on, murmuring about his mind- he was smart, able to solve any puzzle that their shitshow of a situation threw at them. He was kind, waiting for her all those years to get her head out of her ass, patient, able to understand that this was different than what she was used to, such a good, handsome man-

He squeezed her hand in his from where it rested on the pillows.

“I love you, Lup,” he said, and her heart did a complicated little dance inside her chest.

“I...” She trailed off. She knew she was in love with him, too, but when she went to say it out loud, her throat seized up.

She had said various forms of “I love you” to other crew members over the decades, but to say it to Barry, in this moment, had another implication. They were on a dangerous mission. Even if they reformed every year, it was still heart-wrenching to see members of her family die. This would make things a thousand times harder.

But just because it was harder didn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.

She squeezed his hand back.

“I love you too, Barry.”

The idea of having him next to her, through thick and thin, famine and feast, death and life seemed pretty good. They could travel all across the universe and into the unknown, but they would always be each other’s constant.

They’d made love that night, for the first time, finally together after half a century, truly, deeply in love.

In the pre-dawn room, Lup snored next to him. Her hair splayed wildly across the pillow, and Barry watched her, fondly. He gently traced a finger over the curve of one of her ears, and that woke her.

“Barry?” Her voice was gravelly and rough, sleep pouring out from every inch of her. “What’re you doin’ up? You okay?”

She pushed herself up into a sitting position, gathering the blankets around herself, for warmth as well as cover. They’d both fallen asleep nude last night, something Lup delighted in, and something Barry just dealt with, although falling asleep with Lup’s skin pressed to his was rather nice.

Lup squinted at him from her blanket cocoon. “Is something happening?”

He shook his head. “Just thinking.” With that, she flopped back down. She stretched out one arm to him. “C’mere,” she muttered. “It’s cold and you’re warm and I wanna cuddle.”

How could he argue with that?

He laid himself back down, and she burrowed into his side, arms thrown over his chest, one hand curled in his hair, gently playing with it.

“Love you,” he murmured into her hair. “Love you too,” came the reply, whispered against his arm where she smashed her face into him.

Gently, Barry drifted off to sleep, lulled by Lup’s warmth at his side and the love that sustained the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Please for the love of god nobody let me listen to the Across the Universe soundtrack when I have to study because instead I’ll distract myself I’m probs gonna fail my exam tomorrow 
> 
> Anyways, Thanks for reading! Please comment if you can, and also I love you!


End file.
